An extraordinary power facilitating the Conflict Management shift worldwide

The Great Shift:
In the past, conflict often suggests a zero-sum game in which one party can only gain in expense of another party, and this concept has rendered conflict into a destructive behavior. 
Nowadays, various kinds of collaboration instead of conflicting increasingly worldwide, because all parities come to aware the benefit of collaboration.In some scenarios, conflict can stimulate new ideas or help locate existing problems. Therefore conflict can be a good thing if it is well managed.
Today, we are going to talk about one of the big forces that behind to facilitate this shift:

"ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY"

Before:

There are four types of conflict worldwide.

• Inter-organizational conflict:  WAR

We hold the idea that each country in the world is an independent organization. International conflict between countries often results in outbreak of wars. 
Let us recall the world history, the wars brought the huge disaster to the world and human being. The root cause for the war is that the stronger country wants to snatch the nature resources, meanwhile, base on cultural difference with the lack of tools to communicate so that the misunderstanding and distrust are unavoidable, which could intensify the conflict in a large extent.

• Inter-group conflict: LOSE -LOSE

Some companies are caught in conflicting situation due to information asymmetry and the laggard information& technology system. 
For the first reason, sometimes, they give up to collaborate because they do not believe the collaboration will bring the benefit to them. 
For the second reason, the laggard information& technology system, even they choose to collaborate, the low efficiency is a also big obstacle in front of them. 
As a result, all the companies can not achieve the profit maximization which is very pity.

• Intra-group conflict:  1 + 1 < 2

In the past, people can only rely on their physical presence to handle conflict and in most cases the only solution was to get all involved parties in a meeting room for a face-to-face discussion, therefore the cost, efficiency, and the effectiveness was highly doubtful.
No appropriate channels to convey the demand and dissatisfaction from the front-line employee, the labor strike always happen. Apart from that, the inequity of knowledge and resource distribute to each department also cause the negative effect in company.

• Inter-person conflict：Misunderstanding

Distance sometimes could kill everything. People can not express their feelings and ideas in time, gradually and gradually, love could disappear, friendship could alienate and even family affection can be diluted, and all of them are needed to maintain all the time.

Advance Technology? (Quick shots)

•Intangible technology: 
Consultancy, Management skills, Communication skills,
Knowledge management, and etc.

•Information technology:

Internet, computers, smart phones, office systems, soft-wares, apps, and etc.

•Automation Technology: 

Factory automation, Automation Machinery and Tools, and etc.

•Renewable energy technologies

•Medical technology

After:

“Technology enabled organizations and individuals to resolve conflicts efficiently, timely, and peacefully"--- Our Thesis Statement.

Nowadays, with these advance technologies:
Examples as below:

• The Application of Advanced Technology in the Collaboration between Conflicting Organizations

The development of IT gave rise to large multinational corporations.Information spread very quickly across the world, news is updated secondly. The frequent of exposure gives the pressure of PR crisis for both parties to settle the conflict in a shorter time.
Information technology plays an important role to drive this trend. That is why we know more research about IT system propels the transformation in organization and push the collaboration among organizations. Just as Figure 4 elaborates that the several steps which include that persuasion, trust and negotiation are already finished, how to realize the true collaboration, this is an significant part to decide all the steps made is useful or wasteful, so here, the advance technology is the key driving force to push all the process to a successful end.

P&G-Walmart Supply-Chain Partnership (1987)

These two major player in their own industries found their way to leverage on IT by sharing data on the inter-organizational information system (IOIS). They developed three progressive degrees on this partnership: Transactional, Operational, and Strategic, which had achieved an win-win outcome. (Grean & Shaw, 2002)



If you would like to see more in this shift, please refer to Sybil's individual blog: http://sybilkong.blogspot.hk/

• Social Media Efforts in shifting Conflicts into Collaborations

Social media is now playing an important role in achieving organizations’ functional external communication and internal communication, which helps to ease the vary conflicts within this subjects.

In 2012, one of the IBM studies had already indicated that there was a big social shift happened in business world, and investment in social business was increasing within over 1,100 businesses globally. “46 percent of the companies surveyed increased their investments in social business in 2012, and 62 percent indicated they are going to increase their expenditures in the next three years.” (Burnham, 2012) From this perspective, social media has been in a booming market since 2012.

Social media will be more and more important in business operation, as now people are looking for information transparency and timely information updated. The pace of working environment is faster and faster. Globalization is developing and boundary is fading. People are more depend on internet. Face-to-face meeting would somehow be taken place by the communication through social media and any other visualizes communication tools.

Social media is a useful tool in removing the hierarchy within organization. Employees would feel they are the same users as the top management in social media platform, as they have the same rights in sharing thought. Relationship conflicts could be managed through the appropriate communications via social media. Public recognition from the social media would be more effective, even just a simply positive comments from the top management, in the employees’ perspective. In Cialdini research, the application in the principle of consistency, it suggests that “Other studies reinforce that finding and go on to show how even a small, seemingly trivial commitment can have a powerful effect on future actions”. (Robert, 2001) This kinds of interaction would definitely boom up employees’ engagement.
Ideas could be exchanged timely, and people also could be inspired by the vary information that share in social media. Conflict parties would trend to cooperate with each other for timely information exchanges through social media, like the traffic policy example that we shared in our individual blog.
The organization’s external/internal communication would be benefited from this perspective.

If you would like to see more in this shift, please refer to Yanna's individual blog: http://53226543yw.blogspot.hk/

• Evolving Conflict Resolution Practice in Commercial Disputes 

Driven by technological progress, companies now can take more cost effective measures to solve conflicts that could only be resolved by legal process in the past. This dramatically changes the way company handle commercial dispute, and it often generates more satisfactory outcomes. Alternative dispute resolutions such as negotiation, mediation, conciliation, and arbitration are emerging as more favorable options over litigation. Take mediation as an example, technology eases the communication between conflicting companies and creates opportunities for them to negotiate outside the court and reach mutually agreed solution. Virtual chartroom and asynchronous communication remove physical boundary, allowing international dispute to be handled. Information technology and cloud technology facilitate better knowledge sharing for mediators and enhance their expertise in conflict resolution.

When the number of e-commerce transactions is growing day by day, the number of disputes is also rising in the same rate. To combat the increasing number of conflicts in Internet business, automation is playing a more important role than ever before. In the future, people will see automated mediation process coming into their life. Software will be able to conduct mediation, provide suggested solutions based on statistics and algorithms, and also perform administrative tasks.

If you would like to see more in this shift, please visit David's individual blog: http://city50247176.blogspot.hk/

Summary:

Technology does provide more convenient ways for people to settle conflict, yet it is not all-powerful with all the good. For example, the U.S. and Iraq had finally gone to war because they have no common interest, and the advance technology actually make the war more scary. Advance technology also does expand the generation gap between old people and young people. People also believe that it IT that make people have longer distant, and  deprive original natural fun from childhood. 

However, we believe a coin has two sides, as technology progresses, people and people are more closely connected together, and it will help us explore the common interest between people. Moreover, technology will increase the efficiency use of resources, which in turn will reduce the friction between opposite groups competing for the same resource.

Reference:

Burnham, K. (2012, 11 14). How to Use Social Media to Create Business Value. Retrieved 4 22, 2014, from CIO.com: http://www.cio.com/article/721574/How_to_Use_Social_Media_to_Create_Business_Value_?page=1&taxonomyId=3017

GreanMicheal, & ShawJ.Michael. (2002). Supply-Chain Partnership between P&G and Wal-Mart. E-Business Management (P 155-171). Springer US.

Hagemann, B., & Stroope, S. (2012). Conflict management lessons from the second grade. T+D, 2013(JULY), 58-61

Robert, B. C. (2001, 10). Harnessing the Science of Persuasion. Harvard Business Review, p. 76.